Romania probes recruitment of drivers by migrant smugglers

Romanian police carried out nine house searches on Tuesday as part of an investigation into the recruitment of drivers for a Turkish network smuggling Syria migrants into Europe by road.

Public prosecutors said nine unidentified suspects would be questioned following an investigation centered on the county of Bistriţa-Năsăud in northern Romania, where migrant-smugglers tricked and threatened locals into driving Syrian men, women and children from Izmir in Turkey to the country’s western border.

The migrants were then “illegally introduced into the EU through Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, via Romania and Hungary,” the Bistriţa-Năsăud prosecutors’ office said.

Six people — five Bulgarians and one Afghan — were arrested last August after Austrian police discovered the bodies of 71 migrants in a truck abandoned on a highway in the country.